Are there signs that times are changing in regard to attitudes on abortion? One may be the response to a recently trending clip from the HBO television show Girls.
If you want to understand the motivation of the creator and producers of the 2012-2017 series, here is a behind the scenes look.
The series was created by Lena Dunham who also played the character Hannah.
Explaining about the series, Dunham said she hoped it shed light on “the dark lengths that young people will go to in order to try to understand themselves,” and “without giving any answers is able to sort of normalize some of that experience and also help people avoid a few of our mistakes.”
Along with normalizing sinful and self-centered cultural trends, Girls sought to normalize abortion.
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One can hope that the reaction to this a decade later reveals a cultural shift as a new generation looks deeper into what abortion has done to our society.
The clip that has been trending on social media in recent weeks is episode 6 of season 4 where Mimi-Rose tells her boyfriend, Adam that she had an abortion.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, first noted on X in January 2024 how this clip was an attempt to normalize abortion as “women’s empowerment,” yet failed.
She reposted the clip recently along with thousands of others.
Matt Walsh, part of the Daily Wire channel, also reposted the clip on X and took to YouTube for commentary.
Walsh opened his commentary focusing on the men whose children are aborted, often without their knowledge.
“We do know the creators of the show, including Lena Dunham, were definitely trying to make a certain point with this scene and the entire show,” Walsh said.
He goes on to argue that the resulting scene in fact makes the opposite point the writers and producers were aiming for after having purposefully consulted with Planned Parenthood to present a solid pro-abortion view as part of an on-going campaign to normalize abortion.
If those behind the show sought to get the viewer to sympathize or identify with the woman in this case, current reactions in the comments on social media demonstrate they clearly missed the mark.
“I think they were trying to show her as a boss babe and Adam Driver as uncaring, but the opposite happened,” one commentor wrote. “She seems cold and heartless.”
“Let me just say as a woman and as a writer, I just sided with Adam Driver’s character instantly,” one woman said. “If a man didn’t have that reaction, there’s something wrong with him.”
The comments also opened the door to a frenzy of men sharing their personal loss and grief that ensued after having lost their own children to abortion without their consent.
As we see in the scene, Mimi-Rose excused her actions of having an abortion without telling Adam saying, “I didn’t want to talk about it beforehand, I just wanted to do it.”
Perhaps the slight smile on her lips as she announced her abortion was even worse than her words - almost a dare to him to challenge her “right” to do as she pleased with their child.
She then seemed to give herself a pat on the back for telling him at all because she hadn’t shared with boyfriends in the past … but she wanted to be more open with Adam.
He questioned Mimi-Rose on how many abortions she has had, and she answered, “I’m not going to share that with you because that is private.”
The dialog continued with Mimi-Rose continuing to be smug, dismissive, and unruffled as Adam’s anger builds and erupts.
“I don’t understand how you could do something like that without talking to me first,” he said. “It’s - that’s evil.”
Writers Jenni Konner and Dunham worked with Planned Parenthood thinking they had crafted a different approach which the actress who portrayed Mimi-Rose, Gillian Jacobs called “very well done.”
As Walsh noted, the intention was to portray a refreshing and realistic depiction of abortion.
However, he posited there is no approach to make abortion be other than it is: evil.
Sadly, for too many women the scenario portrayed is realistic, women who have disconnected mentally from the concept of carrying a child in their womb, having bought a narrative that it is not a life worth protecting, but a disruption to her life.
Walsh challenged viewers to consider the men who have experienced this scenario as well. He considered Planned Parenthood’s cooperation with the writers an admission that there are often men who have their children aborted without their consent.
“It is impossible to create pro-abortion propaganda,” Walsh stated. “You can try, but any depiction of this practice or its aftermath is automatically horrifying no matter how you present it.”
Tweet This: It is impossible to create pro-abortion propaganda.
Walsh spent the final three minutes of his podcast giving different examples of how the scene could have played out. All failed to produce anything other than horrifying results because abortion is a moral outrage and a tragedy regardless of the circumstances.
Walsh concluded that the writers in this case chose the most horrifying approach, as the woman here has reduced the significance of her abortion to being no more important than having her wisdom teeth removed.
Research has shown that even one person giving encouragement to a woman to choose life has an impact. Even much more so for the father of the child.
Save the Storks reported on how men impact choices for abortion and concluded:
“Men have the power to positively or negatively affect women’s choices for their babies. Men need to know that their support is critical in a woman’s decision to choose life.”
Hopefully, the current reaction on social media toward this decade-old episode of Girls points toward a trend of society beginning to see abortion as unthinkable, emboldening men to embrace their role as partners and fathers and defend lives of their loved ones - when given the chance.
